


The Wheels On The Bus

by jjjat3am



Category: Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: M/M, Samtember, bus driver au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-19
Updated: 2015-09-19
Packaged: 2018-04-21 13:58:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,703
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4831637
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jjjat3am/pseuds/jjjat3am
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve drives a bus in New York City. Sam is the handsome paramedic that doesn't like taking the subway. Is there any universe in which these two aren't in love?</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Wheels On The Bus

**Author's Note:**

> Written a long time ago and for some reason never posted, but the Samtember seemed to be the perfect occasion.

 

 

Steve started driving the B43 night route from Lefferts Gardens to Greenpoint almost straight out of high school. It was just supposed to be a temporary thing, something to bring in money until his big gallery opening. That was the dream back then, at least. Now, five years down the road, he and his best friend Bucky were still sharing an apartment held together with scotch tape and a lot of prayers, and though both of their bedrooms were filled with stacks of Steve’s paintings, the gallery opening was still a million miles away. Bucky worked as an interim librarian at their local public library, but neither of them was exactly raking in the big bucks.

 

The night route wasn’t the safest job in the world, especially the route Steve drove. But his skinny adolescent body had grown into muscle after Steve had taken up boxing, and for the most part the days were a routine. After five years he was a sure hand at the wheel, capable of navigating even New York traffic.

 

In fact, sometimes he downright loved his job.

 

“Hello,” said a handsome dark-skinned man, swiping his card against the meter. Steve echoed the greeting, uncomfortably aware of the heat under his collar. The man smiled at him, before moving to make way for an old lady impatiently jostling her way past. Steve watched him walk away in his overhead mirror, the lines of his body visible even through the baggy cut of his paramedic uniform.

 

It wouldn’t be a lie to say that seeing the handsome paramedic was the highlight of his work day. Steve didn’t even know his name, only that he always said hello and apparently worked nights too. He came on at the same station at Empire and left on Flushing and if Steve was lucky, he’d pick him up on Graham to drive him home in the very early morning. Both of them would be a little blurry and exhausted, but the man’s smile would still be bright and kind. If Steve took extra care to avoid the bumps in the road he now knew by instinct, and if his eyes kept darting up to the inside mirror to catch a glimpse of where the paramedic was sitting, well, that was just the exhaustion acting.

 

“Talk to him, for fuck’s sake, Steve,” Bucky would exclaim, seeing Steve’s dopey smile while rushing through his morning routine, “you’ve never been someone to shy away from a fight, so why is this so difficult? Just ask for his number or something.”

 

But Steve wasn’t convinced. Imagine being hit on by your night bus driver. Creepy, right? He didn’t want to make the man uncomfortable, and he especially didn’t want for him to change to some other bus. So he continued pining.

 

Then one day, Steve got called into work during daytime. Bleary eyed and mussed up, he walked into the office of the branch transport manager, Nick Fury. Fury was famous for being a hard-ass, but he’d given Steve a chance when he gave him the night bus line five years ago. Steve had been fresh from training, clutching at his new shiny CD and Fury had taken one look at him and assigned him to line B43. “If you survive this, I’ll consider taking you on permanently”, he’d said. And Steve stayed.

 

Still, it was with some trepidation that he came to a stop before the office desk filled with papers where Fury was sitting.

 

“Listen, Rogers, I’ll be short. Barton is leaving us next week, moving to New Mexico to start a goat farm, the crazy motherfucker. This leaves one of the day slots open and it’s yours if you want it. You know the route and you have good instincts. Time to start living in the daylight hours.”

 

It was a great opportunity. No more night hours, getting in some sun once in awhile. Maybe restart his unfortunately flagging social life, maybe do some painting in the early morning light instead of the oranges of late afternoon.

 

His internal Bucky voice was screaming at him not to be an idiot, but he was still hesitating, thinking about a kind smile and a now familiar voice.

 

He took the job.

 

The years had taught him the value of stability.

 

But he made a decision on the way home, attempting to keep his balance as he swayed with the other passengers on the bus (he took it out of solidarity, though secretly he still preferred the subway). He’d talk to the handsome paramedic tonight, ask him for his name at least, tell him goodbye, if that counted for something.

 

Steve spent the rest of the afternoon doodling instead of doing anything productive. It was with one of those doodles in his pocket that he sat into the driver’s seat that evening, his name and phone number written down in his best handwriting, a drawing of a bird in flight next to it. Then he waited, fraught with anticipation, for the usual stop.

 

An old man, two boys wearing hoodies, and a middle-aged lady walked inside, and then no one else. He definitely waited too long to close the doors, hearing the whispers start up behind him. He merged into traffic with much less grace than he usually did, wincing when the bus bounced.

 

The man didn’t come. After all, how could he have known that today would be the day that Steve finally had enough courage for a confession?

 

Steve had hoping that he’d show up by morning, but there was no one on Graham or on Flushing.

 

The man didn’t show up the next evening or the one after, which Steve took as a rejection, albeit from the universe, if not from the man himself. It obviously wasn’t meant to be, the smiles were all just simple kindness, and who was Steve even kidding? Who the hell dated their bus driver?

 

He started work on Monday morning and then he was so busy learning how to function in the new circumstances that he didn’t have time to pine. If he found himself searching for a familiar voice in the drone around him, then he’d give himself a stern talking to and refocused on the Toyota Hybrid trying to cut him off in the next lane.

 

And that, as they say, was that.

 

 

*

 

 

Steve’s workday was dynamic on the best of days, but usually descended into insanity rather quickly, especially with the time crutch so characteristic of the afternoon hours. Still, he coped well enough, his easy personality and a keen sense of justice keeping the bus in order.

 

There were two things that he learned early on he had no control over: traffic jams and car accidents.

 

The first were a staple of his day, the second an unpleasant surprise on that surprisingly pleasant Tuesday. The last of the passengers had just come onto his bus, paying the toll with varying degrees of apathy, when they heard the screeching of brakes and then a crash from the street up ahead. Through his window he could see the at least five car pileup as the street rapidly filled with smoke and screams.

 

Steve left the bus parked where it was, reassuring the passengers, then grabbed a fire extinguisher he had in the bus and went on to help.

 

From there on, his world narrowed down to smoke and the bodies that he carried from the smoldering wreckage. He left them to a young doctor who ran her hands over limbs and checked for concussions with a small pocket light. Soon enough, the paramedics arrived at the scene, and the police and the fire department, but he never noticed, too busy wedging his mass of muscle through a gap in a wrecked car door to lift out a frightened boy that clutched tightly to his carefully pressed uniform. By the end of the day it was ruined by ash and droplets of blood.

 

“Bring him over here!” a voice cut through the haze of screams and crying. He moved as quickly as he dared towards it, careful not to jar the boy, who refused to let go of his uniform lapel, even when they were swarmed by paramedics. So Steve turned into an impromptu holding chair for the child as he got checked over.

 

“Hey,” Steve whispered into the boy’s ear, where he was hiding his face into Steve’s collarbone, pressed so tightly against him it was almost painful. “I’m Steve. What’s your name?”

 

The choked out “Jordan” was muffled against his uniform and Steve shifted his grip to make it less constricting.

 

“Jordan, please look at the nice paramedic. He wants to help you, but we need to help him do that. He won’t hurt you, I promise.” Steve said, attempting for his calmest tone of voice, the one he used to calm down stray cats and Bucky after a baseball loss. Jordan hesitated, but nodded, easing his hold on Steve and finally submitting to the check-up administered by the paramedic.

 

“His name is Jordan,” Steve said to the man that was carefully checking on the boy. “I pulled him out of the red SUV.”

 

The man nodded, shutting off his pocket light. “He has a severe concussion, but no fractures that I can find. We’ll drive him to the hospital and try to find his parents from there.”

 

He looked up as he said so and their eyes met. It was the man from the night bus, looking much worse from wear, his dark skin ashen from the smoke. He wasn’t smiling, but he was still beautiful. Steve saw his eyes widen, but they were surrounded by sirens and people crying, and Jordan was still clinging to his neck and looking more frightened by the second. It wasn’t the time.

 

They barely said another word to each other as they managed to convince the boy to let go of Steve and settle into the ambulance with another paramedic, a red haired woman with a serious demeanor, but kind eyes. Steve kept with Jordan while they loaded him up and managed to calm him down enough that when he stepped back, the boy didn’t cry, only shot him one last frightened look before the door closed and the vehicle speed away.

 

It was over quickly after that. They gave him an orange shock blanket. His bus had long been emptied of passengers, who probably took other buses or the subway to where they were headed. Steve spoke a few words with Fury on the phone and was unceremoniously ordered to “Get the fuck home and don’t show up at work for a week. I’m calling you in sick.”

 

He lingered for a moment at the accident site, unconsciously hoping to catch sight of a familiar dark blue uniform, but all the paramedics were gone, only the workers loading up the remains of the cars and the police directing traffic around the scene left.

 

Steve took the subway home, garnering more than a few looks for the strains on his uniform, though it was nothing compared to the full force of a frantically worried Bucky, who saw the footage of the crash on the news and grew anxious when Steve didn’t answer his phone.

 

 

*

 

 

Steve’s week off passed quietly.

 

He watched TV and drew little sketches on scraps of newspaper, and thought about how he’d had the most incredible man in front of him several times now and he’d blown it every time. He’d probably die alone and miserable.

 

On Tuesday he got a call. A quiet woman’s voice and then Jordan’s excited one, and Steve couldn’t stop smiling at the joy in it. He went for hot chocolate with Jordan and his mom on Wednesday. They were both fine, thankfully, Jordan’s mother having escaped with just a broken wrist and a concussion. They’re both endlessly grateful to him, which is more than a little embarrassing. Still, the drawing that Jordan gave him is taped onto the fridge and Steve grinned every time he saw it.

 

On Friday, Bucky begged him to run some errands for him, because he was stuck in a double shift at work. Apparently, a shipment books he’d ordered had just come in and he was itching to read them over the weekend, but didn’t have time to pick them up, so he’d asked Steve to do it for him.

 

Which was fine, really, he didn’t mind doing Bucky favours, except that Bucky’s book orders always ended up being massive tomes of Russian classics and weighed about a ton.

 

Steve walked to the bookstore. It wasn’t that far away from their apartment, but he decided to take the bus on the way back, because the books were heavy and ungainly, and he wanted to get home in time to make dinner.

 

Except for how all plans were pretty much halted when he came onto the bus and spotted the paramedic sitting on one of the window seats. He had dark bags under his eyes and the crease of his scrubs was peeking out from under his jacket sleeves. Steve ended up standing in the middle of the aisle, staring at him.

 

The man must have felt his gaze, because he looked up and his face just lit up with a smile that put the sunset outside to shame. Steve walked over in a daze and folded into the too-small plastic seat opposite.

 

“Hey,” Steve said, trying to adjust in his seat, “I don’t know if you remember me…”

 

“Yeah,” the man said, propping his head on his hand on the windowsill, “Steve, right? Um, I mean…” he coughed, awkwardly and Steve’s heart threatened to explode. “It was written on your name tag. I’m Sam, by the way. Long time no see, man!”

 

“Yeah,” Steve smiled back, pushing his hands deep into his pockets to grasp a folded up piece of paper, “I changed shifts. I drive the dayilight hours now.”

 

“Moving up in the world?” There went Steve’s stop. He didn’t care.

 

“You could say that.” Now or never. His hand finally grasped around a small piece of paper. “Here.”

 

Steve shyly proffered the piece of paper with his phone number and the drawing, now creased and strained because it’s been in his pocket for so long. Sam opened it, then looked up at Steve, surprise on his face.

 

“This is for me?” he asked.

 

“Yeah,” Steve rubbed the back of his neck self-consciously, “I wanted to give it to you on my last day driving the night shift, but you weren’t there, so…”

 

“You just carried it around all this time,” Sam finished his sentence softly, looking down at the piece of paper with wonder. “That’s crazy.”

 

“Well, uh, just so we’re on the same page here, I’m a little bit crazy about you.” Steve peered at him from under his fringe of hair, and there was the smile he’s been hoping for, the one that made Steve’s heart beat faster.

 

“You know what, I don’t trust myself not to lose this,” Sam pulled out his phone and had Steve recite his number, then called him for good measure and watched him like a hawk while Steve put it in his phonebook, along with Sam’s work number and email.

 

“So we’ll finally stop missing our chances,” Sam said and Steve laughed. He was a long way past his stop, but he didn’t care.  He just wanted to stay with Sam for a little while longer.

 

 

*

 

 

They have a date next week.

 

“Will you be picking me up with you bus?”

 

“I don’t think that’s even strictly legal. Besides, my route doesn’t stop at the restaurant.”

 

“Oh, well, I guess I’ll have to make do with just you.”

 

“Good to know that you appreciate me for more than just my vehicle.”

 

“I’d appreciate you a lot more if you kissed me already.”

 

Steve kissed him right there, pressed up against the bus stop. He spent a moment being grateful that he’s not in his work uniform, before Sam’s lips swept all coherent thought from his brain.

 

Okay, so some people like it when their bus drivers hit on them. Steve couldn’t be more grateful.

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Find me on [tumblr](http://jjjat3am.tumblr.com/)


End file.
